


Longhand, 4 A.M.

by Stultiloquentia



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, Episode: s04e04 The Break Up, Epistolary, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 19:18:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6127378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stultiloquentia/pseuds/Stultiloquentia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>I don't even know if that was true until I wrote it down.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Longhand, 4 A.M.

Dear Kurt,

The thing I keep circling around, trying not to look at head on, is that if I make a list of all the times in the past two years I’ve felt most beloved, an uneasy number of them happened right after I’d done something totally idiotic. I mean, yes, fine, by a certain measure, our entire relationship has been me digging myself into a succession of holes and you patiently hauling me out of them. But I don't think I realized what was happening or how fucked up I was with it until the pattern fell apart.

The first time that really sticks out for me is the Gap mess, that time I got Jeremiah fired for being gay and/or sung at by a teenaged lunatic. Honestly I can barely even remember the serenade itself. It's sort of lost in an adrenaline fog, which I'm pretty sure is a blessing. But what I remember vividly is afterward, after the other Warblers had all waved their awkward goodbyes and rabbited, you just hauled me off by the elbow and parked yourself on a bench to wait with me outside the mall for Jeremiah's shift to end. I remember how dithery I was, like my head was a Mickey Mouse balloon about to come loose and whiz away into the sky, except there you were with your hand clamped around the other end of my string, anchoring me to earth. 

I remember making out with Rachel at her house party and the return of my sexual identity crisis. Fighting with you about bisexuality and flooding your inbox with Wikipedia and Scarleteen links until you threatened to take your wire cutters to all my charging cables. I remember being kind of an asshole about it. You were, too. And then of course Rachel kissed me again when I wasn't expecting it, and by then it was just a relief to have the excuse to give up and admit I was wrong. Well, about me. And I thought it was all over, and was looking forward to a lifetime of never speaking of it again...except then like six days later, on a walk after dinner with nobody else around, you went and asked me why I'd _wanted_ to be bi. I didn't know I loved you, back then. I should have. I should have known by the hug at the end of that conversation. Because stopping hugging you that night was one of the hardest things I've ever done.

I'm writing this in the back of my math notebook, because it was the only lined paper I had within reach. If I tried to type it on the computer it wouldn't work; I'd just sit there typing sentences and immediately deleting them, you've seen me try to write a paper, I'm such a perfectionist I can't get words out at all until it's 2 A.M. and I'm too tired to self-censor. 

It's 12:54, currently. Awesome, I'm going to spend all tomorrow shambling around with a sleep debt headache. 

There was the week we went to Scandals and I got drunk and mauled you. I woke up that Thursday morning and felt like there was a cannonball sitting on my chest, which is not actually a simile for the hangover, but for hurting and disappointing you. If it hadn't been for the show, I wouldn't have bothered to get out of bed, but the show must go on and all that shit, so I just sort of hoisted the cannonball, tied it around my neck and got on with it. 

The show went on. But then you came and found me on the stage afterward, where I was fixating on some trivial footwork sequence I'd glitched, wonderful coping strategy, Blaine, and you said oh shit

Okay. Hah, so that is actually the first time I've actually cried, like, actual...leakage...since I got back from NY. Okay, then. Sorry about...I guess that's still legible up there. So you told me you were proud, which, God, of all things, Kurt. I think I might have been just a _little_ unfairly susceptible, I mean, jeez, I was back in the auditorium anyway because it felt too weird standing around in the hallway where everybody else was getting glomped by their parents while my own dear mater and pater were up to their usual in Chicago.

So you said—that—and then you apologized for, I don't even remember, something ludicrous you made up to make me feel better; I will eat my entire tie collection if we both don't know damned well you had nothing in the world to be sorry for. And then you said you wanted to—you trusted me with—you. Kurt, I have never, ever in my life felt so loved as I did that night. I don't mean we didn't have any five star experiences after that, just that that first time was transformative for me. To be seen like that, to know that you were right there with me and you could see all my fuck-ups and insecurity and embarrassment and you still looked into my eyes and touched me the way you did—

Kurt, I need you to understand, no matter what happens between us now, how profoundly that impacted me. I am a mess and a goddamned disaster, and some days I’m living one heartbeat to the next, but no matter what happens to me, ever, I _am_ going to get through it. I am going to survive losing you because I met you in the first place. 

Fuck. I don't think I even realized that until I wrote it down. 

I don't know if that was even true until I wrote it down.

Glee club seems to be coping by awkwardly pretending nothing happened. The gossip mill in the rest of the school is kind of freaking me out; this morning an underclassman in Docs and a Marc Jacobs coat I swear I've never even spoken to shot me a glare that would have turned a harpy into stone, and, while it is entirely plausible I'm imagining this one, I swear I heard a group of girls muttering about impeachment as I walked by the bio labs. Kurt, you mattered to this school. They named you prom queen as a joke, but I don't think you ever understood what uncanny magic you worked on their brains when you turned around and owned it. I think I won the class presidency at least in part because I was Kurt Hummel's boyfriend. I'd been ratified.

But anyway. Despite having nice songs to sing, student government to occupy my time, and Sam Evans of all people being weirdly sweet to me, you will be unsurprised to hear that northwest Ohio remains generally a shithole of a geographic region and its current lack of Hummels is not helping matters.

Kurt, this is something you should never have to read; I think I am about to make this letter unsendable, but, we, I mean Eli and I. We only (we _only_ , God, like it even matters) went down on each other. Traded blowjobs. We were safe; I made him use condoms. Then it was over and I came extremely close to throwing up, but I made it out of there and into my car and home, and then didn't let myself shower before I went to bed as some sort of weird punishment, and I woke up with I think a panic attack, though I don't really know because I've never had one before, and I almost drowned myself in the shower—I don't mean, I mean accidentally, I hit my, I just fell over—and then I careened out of there and was late for first period because I stayed home to buy a plane ticket and I'm lucky I didn't fry my keyboard in the process because I was still pretty wet at the time.

Kurt. I'm so fucking sorry. For everything. For expecting you to coddle your insecure boyfriend instead of chasing your own future, for mistrusting you, and me, and us, and for cheating, and for telling you the way I did, with accusations and justifications that you should not have had to hear. 

I was scared. I missed you. You were absent and distracted, and I convinced myself it meant I was losing you. It spiraled so quickly. That sounds like such a clichéd way to put it, but it's what it felt like, like one minute the bathtub is full, and you don't even notice you've dislodged the stopper with your toe until the water's spiraling out with this dreadful, guttural sucking noise and you're scrabbling around trying to find the plug and you fumble it, and before you can blink you're on your ass in an inch of water, all over gooseflesh. 

And even though it was the best bath you've ever had, you tell yourself the water was starting to get cold anyway, and what you should really do is take a ninety-second shower just to warm you up and oh my god this is the worst metaphor I have ever created, seriously, never mind. And rereading the last few sentences I sound like I'm trying to be flip about something that—isn't very funny.

It's four A.M. Do you remember when we stayed up this late, back in June before you got the Lima Bean job? We dragged cushions out onto my back porch and tried 69ing and barely finished because it was so clumsy and we were laughing too hard, and then we just lay there facing each other and touching softly and talking and talking about, God, everything. New York and what it meant to you and how you might get there, and, just, growing up and how we felt we'd changed from the boys we used to be, and childhood stories, and things your dad has said that made you realize things you want your own kids to realize, and things my mom and dad have said that, well. You remember. And we kept yawning, but neither of us ever suggested we should stop talking and go to sleep. I think that was the last time we talked that way. I mean, we had plenty of conversations after that, but that was the last time we really got down into it, that space we could make for each other, safe space to speak and listen that we could make when we were at our best and that I've never felt with anyone else. I remember for me it first happened just a couple days after we met, when we sat in my car and talked about bullies. So many times after that: I'll never forget a single one.

I guess that's why I'm addressing this ridiculous missive to you now, even though I don't think I can mail it; I'm trying to trick myself, create the illusion of that safety so I can get this out of me. Like a sort of first step. Because believe it or not I am aware of some of the things I have to change within myself, some habits of silence I can't sustain if I intend to carry on living in this skin. I am not a hopeless case. 

I’ve run out of math notebook.

Your, but trying hard to be my own,

Blaine


End file.
